Those concerned about climate change are outraged by President-elect Donald Trump's call to return the United States to energy independence, warning that he is turning the country into a “pariah oil nation.”
Donald Trump has assembled a team to “increase fossil fuel production in a country that already pumps out more oil than any other country in history.” lament Marianne Lovell writes for Inside Climate News.
The fossil fuel industry's influence “is sure to grow under the Trump administration, which does not consider climate change a serious problem and has made 'energy dominance' a policy imperative,” Lovell wrote.
Lovell quotes woke environmental activist Jean Hsu, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Energy Justice Program.Dedicated Combating the climate emergency by advancing a just, renewable, and anti-racist energy future and ending the historic energy violence inflicted on communities of color and the planet. ”
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Sue has been particularly critical of President Trump's choice of Chris Wright, CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, to lead the Department of Energy.
“Choosing someone like Chris Wright is a clear sign that President Trump is turning the United States into a pariah oil state,” Su said. “He is making frontline communities and the planet a climate hell just to line the already bloated pockets of fossil fuel barons.”
Hsu's words echo those of Michael Mann, the inventor of the infamous “hockey stick” climate graph, who made a similar assessment of America's energy future.
“The United States is now becoming an authoritarian state ruled by plutocracy and fossil fuel interests,” Mann said. I wrote Published in Atomic Scientists magazine. “Right now, to put it simply, we are an oil nation.”
collins english dictionary define Petrostate is a derogatory term that refers to “a small, oil-rich country with weak institutions and wealth and power concentrated in a few hands.”
Examples of petrostates include Bahrain, Brunei, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar.
Other critics, realizing the absurdity of this comparison, have retreated from this analogy only a little, though not completely abandoning it.
“The United States is not necessarily a petrostate, but we are acting like a nation whose hydrocarbon industry is a huge domestic constituency, a source of jobs and private sector revenue, and now an exporting nation. ,” Karen Hendricks said. Mr. Lovell cited a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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Curiously, Mr. Lovell continues to criticize the amount of money energy companies pay in taxes.
“Wyoming derives 59% of its state budget from fossil fuel revenues,” she wrote. “North Dakota was at 29%. And Alaska was at 21%.”
Other states “lead Texas, which collects a staggering $14.6 billion annually; California, $7.8 billion; and Pennsylvania, $4.4 billion,” she said.
During President Trump's first term, the United States surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production and became a net exporter of energy for the first time in more than 60 years, Lovell wrote.
She says the 2024 election “made many people realize just how difficult fossil fuel abundance is making the path to climate action in the United States,” but many readers agree that's a good thing. You may be thinking. That's very good.
